I agree that popular music was better in the old days. But that's just because the rise of indie labels, and then the internet, have enabled the more creative artists to thrive on the fringes, instead of having to compete for mainstream popularity.
Imagine: "Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin all target the same audience segment; we should only choose one, and discontinue the other two."
They won't make more money by choosing one and discontinuing the others... you are only going to buy a band's album once, you can only go to the concert when they are in town.. a record label is going to want to give you multiple albums to buy and multiple bands to go see.
You need to keep recording something new to sell. Before you had to take at least some risks to find something that's both easily digestible and goes with the current fashion, and sometimes good music would sneak in, too. Now you can just run it through some buzzword black box and get back something that should make label the most money with least expense.